Analysis: The conference showed there is still considerable life in the SDLP, writes Gerry Moriarty
It was a difficult weekend for the SDLP. For Mr Mark Durkan and his party the recent past offers a bleak landscape and the future is a fearful and uncertain prospect.
At its annual conference in the Wellington Park Hotel in Belfast the party still appeared shell-shocked by the damage it suffered in the Assembly elections - a team of 24 MLAs shrunk to 18.
The SDLP's iconic figures such as Mr John Hume, Mr Séamus Mallon and Ms Bríd Rodgers were retreating from the political battleground. It doesn't yet have a candidate for the European elections in less than four months' time, although nine candidates are campaigning for the nomination which will be decided next month. So at least there is still political ambition.
It has three MPs now, but after the next Westminster election it might have none in the face of the rapacity of Sinn Féin.
What to do? How do you invigorate a party for the challenges ahead, especially at a time of upheaval when the torch is passing from the first generation to the second?
Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures, but this wasn't such a time, according to party leader Mr Mark Durkan. There was no serious talk of the SDLP amalgamating with Fianna Fáil to create an effective all-Ireland party like Sinn Féin, as was mooted in some party quarters last year.
Mr Durkan, in his keynote speech, made only passing reference to the foiled alleged Provisional IRA abduction of a dissident republican in Belfast city centre on Friday night. It was left to Mr Mallon and Mr Alex Attwood to later chastise the republican movement - but neither of them is leader.
It seemed like a gifted opportunity to gain some political advantage over Sinn Féin but Mr Durkan resisted it, preferring the safe balancing act of demanding that, inter alia, republicans end paramilitarism and unionists fully sign up to power-sharing.
Mr Durkan may well be correct in his judgment: when middle-class Catholics are happily voting Sinn Féin where's the point in antagonising more such nationalists who may be considering switching from the SDLP to Sinn Féin? Privately, some senior SDLP politicians confirm that they "can't" unilaterally lash out at the republican movement without in the same breath criticising unionists. The reality, they say, is that irrespective of what the IRA is doing, most nationalists are happy that Sinn Féin is fully signed up to the peace process, and that any perceived undue criticism of republicans by the SDLP will be viewed as the party "cosying up to unionism".
Hence there is little likelihood of the SDLP breaking from Sinn Féin and joining a voluntary coalition with the DUP, Ulster Unionists and Alliance. It's just too risky.
As the SDLP sees it, there is no dramatic mechanism or solution that would lift the party out of its troubles. That's why the SDLP is sticking to the main advice offered in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Don't Panic.
Accordingly, dig in, hold your nerve, maintain your principles and re-organise, was the chief message to the party faithful from Mr Durkan.
"While we have been bruised, we are not broken," he said.
And he added: "Let it never be forgotten that the SDLP in so many different ways has changed so many people's lives for the better. History gets written, then re-written. But no one can write off what the SDLP achieved in our first generation. And a new generation will prove wrong those who write us off now."
No one can deny that the first generation was crucial in creating the peace process, but the huge challenge for those taking over is to maintain that sense of the SDLP being central to the whole political process.
Politics is uncertain, but at this point it seems highly unlikely that the SDLP will in the foreseeable future return as the main nationalist party in Northern Ireland.
The 500 delegates warmly received Mr Durkan's speech, although there is no disguising the problems facing the SDLP, and neither did he seek to shy away from that truth.
If, in the current circumstances, he can maintain the SDLP within reasonable distance of Sinn Féin then that will be a considerable achievement. The point he made at the weekend is that to remain relevant everyone in the party must put their "shoulders to the wheel".
Mr Durkan is seeking to re-structure the party, to streamline its often over-bureaucratic systems. To that end he is organising a special conference to create a new party constitution. He wants to promote more younger people, pointing out that, at 43, he is the youngest of the party's Assembly members.
Belfast-based Dr Alasdair McDonnell, who was elected as the new SDLP deputy leader to replace the "fearless and peerless" Ms Rodgers, will support him in his endeavours.
As was evident at the weekend there is still considerable life, heart and pride in the SDLP, but it needs an extra spark for the battles ahead - and Dr McDonnell may provide it.
He is an independent-minded politician who has ruffled party feathers in the past and won't be slow in ruffling them in the future. The chemistry between himself and Mr Durkan could be fairly volatile, but that might be no bad thing.